Advice: Take the deal or Wait.

Never thought about negotiating for self distribution rights, that's a good idea. Well as of this morning, I gave the company a counter offer, now I'm waiting to hear back from them and see if they accept it.
 
Self-distribution is really critical to such a deal, I agree. I forgot about the option of keeping self-distrib rights, while still allowing them to do their own distribution. That's an interesting take. But no matter what, I'd keep your own self-distrib rights WHETHER YOU GO WITH THIS DISTRIBUTOR OR NOT. Because if all you get is exposure out of the deal, you can do that yourself. Heck, I'm already curious enough to buy a $20 DVD from you to see this film. I don't think it would take you long to make more in self-distrib than the $0 you'd be making from this company. There are so many new self-distribution models out there now, I really think that's the future for small films like yours. You could put together a website, get it into some festivals and just do some online promotion and make a few thousand bucks. Is having it in Wal Mart really such a feather in your cap? I'm just not sure how that would help.

Lance Weiler has apparently sold a few million bucks worth of his ultra-low budget first film, The Last Broadcast, by self-distributing.
 
Sean, and others, I had one idea with self-distribution that I was wondering if people had thoughts on this. Let's say that instead of going the festival circuit with the hope of being picked up by a distributor, instead you thought you had a good enough film to play at quite a few festivals and you tried to select especially ones in your area (I'm thinking specifically if you live in L.A. where you have easy access to so many festivals), then you went the self-distribution route from the start and actually sold DVDs to festival patrons, I wonder if that would be one way to get a decent number of initial sales. I'm just thinking if you play at 20 festivals, then a year later you get distribution, those people are probably not going to remember your film even if it was really good. They've moved on to new entertainment offerings and aren't going to be searching weekly to see if your movie is available for them to buy. I'm not sure if that route, though, would preclude you from later having official distribution. Would it? I mean at least you could generate some sales that way, on your own, pretty easily now days (I mean replication is cheap, you could make a pro product without it being a big issue, have an initial order of 1,000 copies on hand for friends, family, festival patrons, anyone you can sell to through your Website, etc.), and then if you get distribution that would be your bigger success. But if you were able to sell 1,000 units even, making a profit of $10-15 per one, at least you could recoup some initial costs from that. Probably enough to pay for all of your festival submissions, Website and trailer expenses, and additional promotional you may then want to do.
 
Some day soon, I"m hoping something expertly curated like www.nofatclips.com will start paying content providers some advertising dough. Because I go there to watch stuff almost every day...and almost never turn on NBC anymore.

In the meantime, I just read about another self-distribution assistant: http://redantenna.com/

Jonathan, I think you're right, that the lag between festival buzz and selling dvd's can hurt sales, and that selling during or near the festival screenings can help. I suppose I wonder why people would buy the DVD if they've already seen it at the festival, unless it's really unusual. More likely someone who hasn't seen the film at the festival will read about it and order a copy. I've certainly tried in vain to buy DVDs for films that I read about online, only to discover that they're not yet available. By the time they release on DVD I have long since forgotten them.
 
Hey guys, thanks for all the suggestions and stuff. And NO, I haven't done the deal yet. I actually turned down the offer and made them a counter offer. They said they would review the counter offer and get back to me.

They were suppose to get back to me last week, but haven't heard anything. I'm also in the works with working a deal out with a local distributor. I'll give more details onces everything is finalized.
 
Sorry they haven't called. If you don't hear from them by 10 business days / 14 real days then I think you should give them a call. Tell them you're in talks with another distributor and you just wanted to know where they stand on your deal.
 
You should google the names of the people too and check for complaints on fourms. I remember a few posts where people got screwed and they named the firm and people. There was one lady who was notorious for stealing films.
 
Here's the latest update. The company hit me with a counter offer to my counter offer :)

1. They are willing to give me a $10,000 advance and cover E&O Insurance but the rest of the deliverables will be my expense.

2. And they will not go lower then 15yrs for the rights.

Though I hate giving away the rights for that long, I'll at least not be giving the film away for nothing.

Any thoughts. And I already have a lawyer lined up to look at the contract and all that stuff.
 
Depending on how good your movie is, take it. E&O costs over $12K anyway. So you walk away clean with $10K in your pocket. You came out only slightly worse than I did with my first distributed movie and that's not that bad. As for 15 years it goes by fast. My movie was 12 years, but already 4 years have past! :beer:
 
don't worry about the years. You either have one good idea or many. If you only have one - go to the screenwriters area and find more though them. ME only owns DVD/Pay Per View Anyway you can still make deals to BET/HBO/etc but it's unlikely without an agent and more things on your side.
 
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